busybee fluffy rambles

It’s car registration renewal time! Let’s see how much having an EV saved or cost me.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a roundup of current and upcoming EVs. Even though I don’t drive very much, I still like to keep track of where EVs are especially for everyday people who aren’t doing massive amounts of driving or cargo-hauling or whatever. I have no plans to upgrade away from my 2019 Niro any time soon, but I do know a lot of people who are EV-curious but not curious enough to do actual research, so I like to know where things are at.

With all of the FUD going around right now and the American auto industry’s hyperfixation on making everything into giant SUVs, I thought it’d be nice to raise awareness of the neat stuff that’s still happening.

A question that keeps on coming up in my conversations is: where exactly is the electric vehicle adoption the highest?

There’s plenty of information about it on a per-country basis but I couldn’t find anything that breaks it down by US state. So I did a little number-crunching, and figured I’d post it here so that other people can benefit from it.

blep

So, today I took a rather small trip down to Tacoma, and stopped at a friend’s place in Puyallup on the way back. I very quickly discovered that in the current cold weather, my Leaf consistently had an actual range of around half of what it predicted, and if I’d relied on its range estimate I would have probably been stranded around 5 miles from home.

I don’t know why my brain keeps on fixating on EVs. I already have my Leaf SL, and I’m really happy with it all in all. I try to be excited about future tech and this usually manifests in me starting to think about what car I’d buy next, which then starts to feel like me planning to buy another car, even though I really don’t need to.

Anyway, a lot of my thoughts about the current cars worth mention have changed since that last article, and here’s my current thoughts on things.

A real smorgasbord of things to ramble about/catch up on.

I’m a pretty unabashed fan of battery electric vehicles.

Well, I am slightly abashed in the fact that I feel like it’d be much better if mass transit were more accessible in more places, and even the most efficient BEV still has some pretty severe ecological issues associated with them (lithium refinement, impact of manufacturing the vehicle itself, parking space, road space, externalities of power production, etc.), but as a form of harm reduction in the society that we are stuck in within the vast majority of the continental US, they’re still way better than internal combustion engine cars, for those whose lifestyles require a car and can accommodate the (vanishing) limitations of a BEV. Even in areas where most electricity is generated by fossil fuels, the environmental impact of charging a BEV (with emissions generated in a centralized location) is much lower than the impact of carrying a little inefficient fossil fuel combustion source everywhere you go.

So, BEVs are an improvement. The thing is, the state of BEVs is pretty abysmal in general, at least in North America. In other parts of the world there’s some pretty compelling vehicles available (such as the MG4) but the US auto market is currently emphasizing large “crossover SUVs” and pickup trucks, and combined with the fascination of maximizing the car’s range, most BEVs coming out here are forced into a situation of having a gigantic battery, raising the overall vehicle price, and therefore meaning that every electric vehicle ends up being some ultra high-end luxury car.

Update (1/16/2023): Added some stuff about the Hyundai/Kia duality that I’d missed previously. Also a change of opinion on the EV6.

Update (3/31/2023): Chevrolet is making a very bad decision